MIT Assistant Professor Ariel Furst and her colleagues are looking to DNA to help guide the process. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a significant product of many human activities, including industrial manufacturing. It is also a major contributor to climate change. Therefore, a major goal in the energy
Carbon dioxide is a significant product of many human activities, including industrial manufacturing. It is also a major contributor to climate change. Therefore, a major goal in the energy sector has been to chemically convert emitted COis available in abundance, it has not yet been widely used to generate value-added products. Why not?molecules are highly stable. Therefore, they are not very susceptible to being chemically converted to a different form.
To explore opportunities for improving this process, Furst and her research group focused on the electrocatalyst, a material that enhances the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process. The catalyst is key to successful operation. Inside an electrochemical device, the catalyst is often suspended in an aqueous solution.
What was needed was a way to position the small-molecule catalyst firmly and accurately on the electrode and then release it when it degrades. For that task, Furst turned to what she and her team regard as a kind of “programmable molecular Velcro”: deoxyribonucleicMention DNA to most people, and they think of biological functions in living things. But the members of Furst’s lab view DNA as more than just genetic code.
Better still, the two strands can be detached from one another. “The connection is stable, but if we heat it up, we can remove the secondary strand that has the catalyst on it,” says Furst. “So we can de-hybridize it. That allows us to recycle our electrode surfaces — without having to disassemble the device or do any harsh chemical steps.
The team found that when the DNA-linked catalysts were freely dispersed in the solution, they were highly soluble — even when they included small-molecule catalysts that don’t dissolve in water on their own. Indeed, while porphyrin-based catalysts in solution often stick together, once the DNA strands were attached, that counterproductive behavior was no longer evident.
Immobilizing the DNA-linked catalyst on the electrode also significantly increased the rate of CO production. In a series of experiments, the researchers monitored the CO production rate with each of their catalysts in solution without attached DNA strands — the conventional setup — and then with them immobilized by DNA on the electrode. With all three catalysts, the amount of CO generated per minute was far higher when the DNA-linked catalyst was immobilized on the electrode.
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